DOE Site Study

["Jim Nelson" <nelsonjima@HOTMAIL.COM>]

This is an interesting follow-up to Sandy's post.



http://www.thehawkeye.com/daily/stories/ln10069.html



http://www.thehawkeye.com/daily/stories/ln10068.html



Research confirms IAAP dangers

By Dennis J. Carroll

The Hawk Eye

• Team finds workers were exposed to a variety of hazards.

Findings by a University of Iowa health team support Middletown munition 

workers' claims that they were exposed to a wide variety of dangerous 

materials that may have caused long-term illnesses and even deaths.

The team, led by Dr. Laurence Fuortes of the U of I College of Public 

Health, has issued its first-year report detailing the working conditions 

and the hazardous materials often encountered by hundreds, if not thousands, 

of workers at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant.

The Atomic Energy Commission assembled, test-fired and in later years, 

disassembled nuclear weapons and their components at IAAP from the late 

1940s to the mid-1970s.



As many as 40,000 people may have worked at the plant during AEC's tenure. 

More than 2,500 were identified by the university researchers as AEC 

workers, but it often was difficult to distinguish between AEC and other 

weapons workers from available IAAP records.

Fuortes' group, working with a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of 

Energy, assembled records and accounts from the plant operators, the 

Department of Energy, the Army and workers themselves and found that workers 

handled or came in contact with such hazardous elements as:



• Radioactive materials including uranium isotopes 235 and 238, depleted 

uranium, plutonium, tritium and X-rays.



• Beryllium. Lighter than aluminum but stronger than steel, beryllium is 

used in nuclear weapons to boost the nuclear chain reaction.



• Explosives such as RDX, TNT, tetryl and HMX.

"For much of the work force there was considerable potential for (skin) and 

airborne exposure to (explosive) agents through process of formulation, 

melting, pouring, packing and extensive machining ...," the report said.



• Numerous chemical solvents and curing agents.



• Asbestos, radon and silica.

The survey noted the miles of asbestos-coated steam pipe and temolite 

asbestos fiberboard-lined tunnels at the ordnance plant.

"Much of this asbestos insulation or construction material is in relative 

disrepair ...," the report said.



University researchers also found that even though many employees did not 

work directly with hazardous materials, they likely were exposed to numerous 

occupational hazards through secondary contacts.

"These workers include guards on surveillance duty, laundry personnel who 

handled contaminated clothing, and various delivery and storage personnel," 

the report said.



It also noted that IAAP workers described "personal or co-worker episodes of 

extensive (skin) and hair discoloration resulting from high explosives 

exposures."



The health experts found that the AEC's attempts at monitoring worker 

radiation exposure was often spotty.

"It is clear that many production workers and others potentially at risk 

were not monitored," the report said.



It cited examples of security guards who were not given radiation detection 

badges, even though they worked around radioactive materials.

"Several of the security guards who did not receive dosimetry recall 

standing by and signing for the radioactive materials when they arrived by 

rail," the report said.



It also noted that unmonitored workers told of "spending their entire shift 

in the rooms where the devices containing radioactive materials were 

partially assembled."



The study also noted reports by workers that some of the women on Line 1 

worked late into their pregnancies.

The university study supports findings about poor radiation monitoring 

discovered in a recent U.S. Department of Health survey of the plant's 

history.



The federal study cited a 1971 health protection survey at the plant that 

found problems with the plant's system for monitoring radiation 

contamination.



"Areas not covered by the monitoring system included the change room (dress 

out) and cafeteria areas," the federal report said.

The 1971 report noted that workers wearing potentially contaminated 

contractor-supplied clothing would wear the same clothing to the cafeteria.



The university survey also provides a Line 1 building-by-building account of 

what AEC operation occurred in each building and the hazardous materials 

involved.



In their conclusions, researchers said their findings support creation of a 

medical surveillance program.



"This conclusion is based on the suggestive evidence that a large number of 

workers had significant exposures to detrimental agents and the strong need 

expressed by former workers for a credible targeted program of medical 

surveillance and education."



The study said the screening and protection program should center on workers 

at risk for bladder cancer, chronic respiratory disease and lung cancer.



Researchers also noted that they are still waiting for records on IAAP 

workers and operations to be forwarded from the Pantex nuclear weapons site 

in Texas.



The AEC moved its operations from Middletown to Pantex in the mid-1970s, and 

many IAAP records apparently are still warehoused there.

Over the past 18 to 24 months, workers who had been sworn to silence as they 

diligently manufactured the weapons that helped win the Cold War began to 

tell their stories of lax protection, poor health monitoring and sometimes 

extremely dangerous working conditions.



The plant's commander, Col. Bruce Elliott, has pledged that the Army will 

not seek recrimination against those who talk of their experiences, and 

Congress recently passed legislation designed lift the veil of secrecy 

surround plant operations.



Reports of 'blue flash' studied

By Dennis J. Carroll

The Hawk Eye

• Scientists offer varying theories about what may have caused event.

Federal and state regulators are investigating the possibility that a 

runaway nuclear chain reaction at the Middletown munitions plant in the 

early 1970s released a large burst of radiation that may have killed two 

workers and sent large amounts of radiation into the environment.

One regulator, Dan McGhee of the Radiological Bureau of the Iowa Department 

of Public Health, said there appears to be "a 50-50 chance" that a nuclear 

"criticality" occurred in which people were killed.

According to Department of Energy reports, a criticality accident occurs 

when the minimal amount of fissionable material necessary to sustain a 

nuclear reaction inadvertently comes together, setting off the chain 

reaction.



There is a sudden release of energy and deadly radiation, but not 

necessarily an explosion.



Such an event is accompanied by a blue flash of light or a glow that can 

linger for some time.



It is thought that if such an event did occur at the Iowa Army Ammunition 

Plant, it may have occurred in one of the areas used to assemble and 

disassemble nuclear bombs.



In the entire Atomic Age, there have been only 60 documented criticality 

events reported worldwide, according to scientists at the Los Alamos 

National Laboratory in New Mexico, and only 21 fatalities reported since 

1945.



Such an occurrence at the Middletown plant is not listed among those events, 

as published in a 2000 update of "A Review of Criticality Accidents" by the 

Los Alamos lab and Russian nuclear experts.

Investigators, who include the Iowa Department of Public Health, the 

Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, have 

centered their probe around information contained in recently declassified 

documents and the accounts of former IAAP workers who said they witnessed or 

were familiar with the event.



Pinning down a date has been difficult, but the reported flash is believed 

to have occurred in the summer of 1972 or 1973, according to researchers at 

the University of Iowa College Public Health who have talked with former 

nuclear weapons workers who said they saw or knew of the flash.



A report from the university survey team includes the account of a worker 

who said he witnessed a blue flash in a nuclear assembly room, then helped 

two injured workers who later died.

However, former workers remain reluctant to say much more -- assuming they 

know more -- and the reported victims have not been identified.

One is said to have died the day after the flash, the other a year later.



Nuclear weapons were assembled and, in later years, disassembled at 

Middletown in circular reinforced-concrete rooms, about 30 feet wide. The 

rooms were surrounded by earth and topped with tons of gravel to contain 

radiation from possible nuclear explosions or other radiation releases.



Daniel Bullen, former director of the nuclear reactor program at Iowa State 

University, said it is unlikely that a criticality would have occurred 

during the assembly or disassembly of a nuclear weapon.

"I would be extremely skeptical," he said.



Bullen is not involved in the IAAP investigation.

Other nuclear scientists have said such a glow could have been caused by a 

chemical fluorescence or phosphorescence or a glow from tritium -- a 

radioactive material sometimes handled by IAAP nuclear workers.

Scott Marquess, project manager for the EPA Superfund cleanup at the Iowa 

Army Ammunition Plant, said his agency is trying to determine whether there 

are residual signs of such a criticality that would remain nearly 30 years 

later.



For example, it is considered possible that fission materials from a 

criticality still might be embedded in nearby glass, and there still could 

be lingering radiation.



Bill Field, radiation expert with the university's team surveying the health 

of former IAAP nuclear workers, said the blue flash or glow seen by workers 

could have been what is known as Cerenkov radiation, in which charged 

radioactive particles traveling faster than the speed of light from a 

fission reaction release a blue glow.



That often is observed at nuclear power plants when spent nuclear rods are 

submerged in water, but that is a controlled environment.

In an April letter to Army officials urging a aerial radiological survey of 

the plant, Gov. Tom Vilsack cited recently declassified documents that he 

said refer to plutonium, "ground zero" and "an incident that may have led to 

contamination" in the early 1970s.

It has not be determined whether that "incident" was the blue flash seen by 

workers.



The Atomic Energy Commission assembled, test-fired and in later years, 

disassembled nuclear weapons and their components at IAAP from the late 

1940s to the mid 1970s.

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